5 “No Holds Barred” Steps You Have to Take NOW In Order to Save Your School!
Before we get into the meat and potatoes of this report, let me start with the story behind it.
I recently bumped into an instructor I had worked with a few years ago. He admitted that he and his school had gotten back into financial trouble since the last time I helped him. You see, a few years back, I took over the marketing of his school and I helped increase the school’s revenue by 77% in one year without spending anything but the profits on the uniforms and sparring equipment.
It happened at a time when the stock market was falling and many businesses were going under (2001), yet it was the best year he had ever had in his entire teaching career. I had helped put him at the throttle of a money train as it was gaining speed. However, as soon as I left, he took his foot off the throttle and let it coast, perhaps thinking that it would run on forever. Instead, it’s been slowing and slowing, and, in 3 short years, is now about to stop completely.
Even though I was bursting at the seams with the desire and the knowledge to help him totally turn things around for his school again, I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to fill his head with “quick fix” ideas that he would use to “duck tape” the problem instead of fixing it right and for good. I knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t ready to truly fix the problem and he didn’t really want to hear I had to say.
He didn’t want to hear that the school’s situation was his fault. He didn’t want to know that it was his own immaturity that was costing him business. He wasn’t ready to accept that he was reaping what he sowed and that he was going to have to get his hands dirty if he wanted to clean up his mess.
Until he was ready to accept responsibility for his school’s dire situation, he wasn’t really ready to change it. Are you?
You may not want to hear all this, either. The solutions to saving your school are not going to be pretty, easy, or fun. But the best things in life never are. You didn’t become a martial arts instructor without hard work and sacrifice, so you can’t expect to save your school without them either.
If you and your school facing financial ruin… if you are contemplating closing the doors forever… if you are wondering how you’re going support yourself and your family, then you need to answer the following questions.
Are you ready to accept responsibility for your school’s lack of performance? Are you ready to bring your school back from the dead? Are you saying to yourself that what you’ve been doing hasn’t been working; it’s time to do something different? Are you willing to do whatever it takes to keep your dream alive?
If you have found yourself at the end of your rope, then you only have 2 choices: climb to the top or fall to the bottom. Falling’s easier, but it hurts. Climbing is harder, but it’s the only way to get to where you truly want to be… the top.
If you are willing to climb, then in this report I will give you the “no-punches-pulled” advice on how to climb and the encouragement to get you to the top. The climbing, however, is up to you. You will get all the recommendations that my friend wasn’t ready for. It won’t be easy. It won’t be fast. It may even be a bit painful. But the view from the top will be worth it.
Grab that rope tightly, because here we go…
Step #1: Accept Responsibility.
The first thing that you absolutely, positively have to do in order to permanently change your situation for the better is to accept that the current situation and any solution to it is entirely up to you. All the successes, all the “non-successes”, all the highs, the lows, and the in-betweens are the result of decisions that you made or didn’t make and the actions that you have taken or didn’t take.
This is a hard pill for many to swallow, but it is vital for the healing to begin. If you are having a tough time with it… tough. After all, if you cannot accept responsibility for the school’s problems, if you can only blame others, if you believe that you are at the whim of the forces around you, then how can you ever expect to lead your school to success?
It just amazes me how many people will call themselves “Master” or “Grand Master”, yet still believe that they are a slave to everything that happens to them and around them.
These are the same people who will look at other people who are more successful and call them “lucky” or “undeserving”. Then, they’ll look at less successful people and call them “untalented” or “losers”.
Yet when these people become successful themselves, suddenly it’s because of their “hard work”, “talent”, and “dedication”. However, if they find themselves unsucessful as to where they want to be, then it becomes “bad luck” or “bad economy” or “special circumstances”.
It’s like a kid that gets an “F” in school and claims that it wasn’t “their fault”; it was always somebody else’s. If the words “It’s not my fault” are your mantra, then perhaps you don’t deserve to be in business, let alone in charge of teaching others (especially impressionable youth).
Think about what you would tell one of your own students who claimed that the reason they couldn’t do a technique, or form, or an exercise is because they didn’t have time to practice… or because they didn’t have the money to get the right equipment… or because they were too short, tall, thin, fat, weak, or inflexable… and that the other students in the class were just “lucky” to be so good?
Would you agree with them? Would you say that they should just give up because everyone else was just more “talented”. Or would you tell your student that all it took was hard work, dedication, and practice. Would you remind them that their levels of skill and ability are up to them?
The same is true for you.
If you do not take responsibility right here, right now for where you and your school are at this moment, then I cannot help you. Good luck.
However, if you are ready to face that person in the mirror and own up to everything that you have done, or not done, to get this school where it is, then we’re ready to go forward.
Step #2: Get Your Priorities Straight.
I can tell you that the main reason my friend’s martial arts school went downhill wasn’t because he didn’t care about it. It wasn’t because the school was not important to him. It was because he didn’t REMEMBER that it WAS important to him. His priorities were out of whack.
More specifically, in the 3 years since I left the school, he had not changed a thing. It looked exactly the same! When I left, he was talking about purchasing new equipment, re-doing the floors, and marketing more. Three years later, however, there’s no new equipment, the same frazzled carpet, and no further marketing efforts beyond the exact same phone book ad and brochures I designed.
He could use the excuse of the birth of his new child to explain why he hadn’t been paying attention to his business. However, he has also owned 3 new vehicles during that time and kept one as a hot rod that he is constantly pouring money and time into.
Had he been spending the same amount of time, effort, and money on his school as he did his hot rod over the past 3 years, there wouldn’t be a problem today. He would have had a nicer school, more equipment, and more students (and thus, a nicer “hot rod”), even without my help. But his actions were incongruent with his priorities.
I have seen this with many instructors, small business owners, and regular people, in general. Sometimes we all forget what’s really important to us and it takes a sharp jolt, a shock, or a devastating event (like death, divorce, bankruptcy, etc.) to wake us up remind what we truly care about. Many times, it’s too late.
As the saying goes, “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone”.
Hopefully, you’ve realized what your school means to you before you lose it. But, it is time to put that meaning into definite, concrete terms. It’s time to make a list.
Right now, get out a pen and some paper. Write down everything in your life that’s important to you. Don’t type; it’s more personal when you physically write it. List things like family, friends, home, the school, etc. Get a little specific like “immediate family” or “children”, “spouse”, “certain friend”.
Include anything you own of value like tools, vehicles, your home, jewelry, electronics, etc.
Also list more intangible things that are important to you like your health, your pride, free time, training, social life, time with friends, etc.
Don’t put it off; write out this list right now! Don’t worry if you forget some things, you can always re-work the list. Just get it together now!
Now that you have made a list of what’s important in your life, it’s time to prioritize them. Rewrite the entire list on a new sheet of paper, putting the most important thing first, second most important thing second, and so on.
Once you’ve gotten the list re-written in order, give each item this litmus test:
Ask yourself, “Am I willing to sacrifice everything on this list below this item in it were in jeopardy?”
If you are not willing, move what you wouldn’t sacrifice above the item in question. Notice I didn’t say “even” with it. Everything needs to be above or below, with the possible exception of individual family members and friends. It is vital to the later steps in helping your school.
Here’s an example of what this question means in actual terms:
Let’s say that your child was sick and needed an operation within 3 months or they would no longer be around. The operation costs $10,000. Could you come up with that money without borrowing, stealing, or using credit (which is still considered “borrowing”)? Would you be willing to sacrifice everything else on that list to save them? Wouldn’t you be willing to sacrifice your home, close your school, sell your vehicles, swallow your pride, and even put your own health at risk to save theirs?
Of course you would. No question. That’s what a parent does. Now, go to the next item in question on the list and do the same thing.
This is the same question that Dave Ramsey, the nationally known financial counselor, asks the people he counsels when they are starting their journey to financial freedom. It helps focus people on really working to get on their feet and out of debt; like they were saving their dying child.
In this scenario, think of your school as your child. Of course, it should be less important than your real children and, therefore, be lower on the list than your actual family, so don’t think I am suggesting that you save the school and alienate your family. I am suggesting that everything on your list of priorities below your school is up for negotiation. That may mean your pride. That may mean your free time. That may mean your precious fishing boat that you almost never use.
You may have even figured out that keeping the school isn’t as important as you thought. Maybe you discovered when making this list that spending time with your family, or continuing your own training, or focusing on your career outside of teaching, were more important.
Perhaps you realized that teaching your students is more significant to you than where you teach them. Your students may follow you wherever your physical school may go (within limit). If it goes under, you can still teach your students in the backyard, the garage, at someone else’s school, a local gym, civic center, the park, etc.
Home is where the heart is and the school is where the teacher is.
So, if closing the school is your only option, remember that it’s just a building. Find another one. Or don’t. Sometimes a few steps back will give you the room you need to get a running start to leap over your obstacles
In these cases, it may make more sense to let the school go for now and focus your attention where it really matters to you. However, if the school is in a position on your list of priorities where it’s worth saving, then let’s move on to the third step…
(To Be Continued)
©Copyright 2004 -Larry D. Escher
Posted by ldescher 
